The bizarre case of a German soldier who registered as a Syrian refugee has exposed failings in Germany’s handling of a mass influx of over a million asylum-seekers since 2015.

Posing as a Damascus fruit seller, army lieutenant Franco Albrecht, 28, had managed to gain asylum in his home country, obtaining a space in a shelter and monthly benefits of 409 euros ($447) even though he speaks no Arabic.

Investigators say Albrecht — who harbored far-right, anti-immigrant views — was plotting an attack that he planned to blame on refugees.The case, which came to light last week, has sparked an outcry in Germany, where skepticism was already running high over the authorities’ ability to competently handle the record influx of refugees.

It adds fuel to criticism of the asylum bureaucracy raised by activists and legal experts over recent months.

Critics have warned that many officials and interpreters are under-qualified, and that chaos engulfing the administration could harm vulnerable victims fleeing the horrors of war.

Take the case of Mohamed Homad, a Syrian refugee from Aleppo, who last October received two conflicting decisions on his asylum application.

In the first letter, he was accorded refugee status which grants him residence for three years as well as the right to bring his immediate family members to Germany.

In the second letter, which arrived just a few days later, however, he was only given subsidiary protection — which rules out family reunion, Homad told AFP.

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